SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories from the Lotus Sutra

Dogen-Zenji so cherished the Lotus Sutra that he actually carved a selection of it into his door. This, the core text of not only Zen but the whole of Mahayana Buddhism, has never lost its appeal among practitioners of the Way. Join us for our SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories From the Lotus Sutra led by Sensei Joshin Byrnes, Sensei Genzan Quennell

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ROSHI JOAN: News, Teachings, Travels

Continuing her travels in Asia after the Nomads Clinic and Pilgrimage to Manaslu and co-moderating the Mind and Life meeting at the Dalai Lama's residence in Dharamsala, Roshi is now beginning an art journey in Japan with Kaz Tanahashi and Mayumi Oda. She returns to Upaya on Nov. 16.

All is very vibrant at Upaya at this time, and there is a lot of gratitude for our local sangha and residents who keep the practice stream flowing. Special thanks to our Associate to the Abbot Joshin, and Resident Coordinator Genzan. Great thanks to Jiryu, Shinzan, and Rinzan, and a fine group of residents, and Upaya's longterm staff Ellen, Maia, Natalie, Roberta, Áine, and Sue.

We are accepting applications for Upaya's resident program. Please consider joining Roshi, Visiting Teachers, and Upaya for three months or more of dedicated practice and learning. By application, click here.

Roshi as well has a number of papers she has written on compassion. If you wish to receive a copy, please write the office: upaya@upaya.org

For several new videos of interviews with Roshi Joan on Upaya's Blog, click here.

Roshi Joan started a Google+ Community and more than 1500 people have joined so far. Click here to join.

Upaya is guided by a series of remarkable Visiting Teachers. We are grateful for Sensei Robert Thomas (Nov 2013), Sensei Irene Bakker (Jul/Aug 2013), Roshi Eido Frances Carney (Sep 2013). Also, we are happy that Sensei Alan Senauke is now a Core Teacher for our Chaplaincy Training and will be a Visiting Teacher in spring, 2014. Note that Roshi Norman Fischer will be leading Upaya's Summer Ango in 2014 and Sensei Robert Thomas will be leading spring sesshin, 2014 and will be a Visiting Teacher in fall 2014.

Roshi now has five new books available for sale at Upaya: Four are photography books — "Seeing Inside," "About Face," "Original Face: Unmediated Expressions of Tibet, Nepal, Burma," and "Leaning into the Light." "Lone Mallard" is a book of her haiku. In addition, over a hundred of her remarkable photos are available to look at (and purchase) on Upaya's website:https://www.upaya.org/seeing-inside/

UPAYA'S BLOG

Leaning Into the Light: Roshi Joan Halifax

What have I done!?–King Ashoka

This is the first time in the history of the earth that major threats to planetary survival stem from our human behavior. We can mechanically solve certain kinds of problems, but technology cannot heal our deluded mind, and for many, technology feeds our delusions. Looking deeply, we see that only wisdom and compassion can solve delusions. How can we have the energy and commitment, the aspiration and inspiration to develop qualities of mind and heart that will nourish a sane and balanced world?

FEATURE ARTICLES

An Interview with Brad Warner: Rev. Danny Fisher

At his Wikipedia page, Brad Warner is described as “an American Sōtō Zen priest, author, blogger, documentarian and punk rock bass guitarist.” Trained and ordained by Gudo Wafu Nishijima in Japan, he is also the founder of Dogen Sangha Los Angeles.

Brad is also the author of such dharma books as Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies & the Truth About Reality; Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen’s Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye; Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma; Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between; and Hardcore Zen Strikes Again! In addition, he has authored the works of fiction Gill Women of the Prehistoric Planet and Death To All Monsters!, directed the documentary film Cleveland’s Screaming, released several albums with punk bands, and served as a co-commentator on Gudo Wafu Nishijima’s translation of the Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika. He is also the subject of the new documentary film Brad Warner’s Hardcore Zen.

Brad’s new book is There Is No God and He Is Always With You: A Search for God in Odd Places, about which Publishers Weekly says:

…[Warner] momentarily sets aside his punk weapons of iconoclasm and takes a more respectful, even reverential tone to a perennial question: does God exist? As a practicing Zen Buddhist, his way of considering this question is entangled in oft-misunderstood concepts such as enlightenment. Warner never shies away from such complications; instead, they become grounds where the Western understanding of God and the Buddhist approach to reality and experience meet.

Brad is a friend and has been a guest at University of the West (where I teach), and so when Kim Corbin at his publisher New World Library asked me if I wanted a review copy of the new book and some professional time to pick Brad’s brain I jumped at the chance. Below is our interview, which we did via email with Kim’s help.

Brad, why write about God at all? And why write about God right now?

I’ve been interested in God as long as I can remember. I wasn’t raised in a religious environment. So I first heard about God from other kids at my school who were religious. I found the idea fascinating. I wondered if it could possibly be true or if it was just like Bart Simpson said, “an idea grown-ups invented to scare kids, like the Boogey Man or Michael Jackson.” As I got older I never lost my fascination with God. When I was 18 I met a Zen teacher who often explained Zen philosophy in terms of God. He’d been raised Catholic. I didn’t know at the time that it was weird to talk about God in Buddhist terms. But his ideas about God made sense to me, whereas the other ideas I’d heard about God just seemed like fairy tales.

I think right now we need to talk about God because it’s an important topic. Whether you believe in God or not, you’re affected by the idea of God. People are willing to fight and die over their definitions of God. It’s not something we can ignore. We need to know what we’re talking about of we ever hope to have any real dialogue on the subject. And I think we have to have dialogue on the subject. We can’t continue just yelling “Yes! He exists!” “No! He doesn’t!” back and forth at each other imagining that whoever shouts the loudest is going to win in the end. It doesn’t work like that.

You talk about the uneasiness that some, including Buddhists, have with the word “God.” How do we become more comfortable with the word and the ideas wrapped up in it?

I don’t think we need to become comfortable with it. I used the word God because it’ such an uncomfortable word. It forces you to respond in some way. And I think that’s a good thing.

Too many people in Buddhism are too averse to conflict. We have these ideals about peace and harmony and community, which are all great ideas. But real peace doesn’t come by simply hiding ourselves away from anything that has to do with conflict. We need conflict. We just need to be able to have conflict without actually harming each other. But even the idea of doing no harm can be misconstrued when we decide that we have to make everybody we meet feel nothing at all. Sometimes a little bit of what some might call harm is a good thing if we approach it in the proper spirit.

The ideas wrapped up in the word God are often contentious and controversial. But that’s OK. We need to get through these arguments in order to find out where we really stand.

I mean, we’ve got one side that says, “Kill everybody who disagrees with me!” Then you’ve got the other side that slinks away and says, “I will maintain peace and serenity by never engaging with anyone I disagree with.” They’re actually both doing exactly the same thing, which is running away from conflict. You could argue that the ones who refuse to engage with others do less harm. But really, they just put off doing harm until later.

You write, “In my opinion it’s entirely wrong to say that Buddhism is a religion without a God. It’s quite the opposite. To me Buddhism is a way to approach and understand God without dealing with religion.” Can you help us understand what you mean by this?

I feel like religion is where you have all the answers. Even atheism can be a religion when it says it has the answer and the answer is there is no God. It’s the same as saying there is a God and he’s exactly the way I say he is. Buddhism doesn’t provide answers. It’s able to say, “I don’t know.” But it doesn’t say “I don’t know” because it’s confused. It says “I don’t know” because “I don’t know” is the proper answer to some questions. It’s the proper answer to a lot of questions! Maybe most of them!

God is the biggest question of all. And the only answer is “I don’t know.” Even God doesn’t know about God. There’s nothing to know and no one to know it!

By “approaching God” I mean it’s a way of asking those big questions like “Why are we here?” and “What is the purpose of life?” without ever accepting any easy answers. We think every question needs an answer. But maybe they don’t. Or maybe the answer is to say, “I don’t know” with complete conviction.

Buddhism isn’t a religion without God. It doesn’t have a belief in a creator deity. It doesn’t believe in a big man in the sky with a beard who sends lightning bolts down to smite his enemies. But it doesn’t say that this universe is just a conglomeration of dead matter either. Life has meaning even if we’ll never completely understand what it means. We just have faith that there is a meaning. I think that kind of faith is what a lot of religious people call “God’s will.” Maybe that’s as good a definition as any other.

Brad, in the promotional material for the book, you talk about mostly agreeing with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris — the “New Atheists” — with the caveat that “the God that they’re spending so much energy denouncing isn’t the kind of God I believe in.” Another criticism that others, like Chris Hedges, have made of the New Atheists is that their atheism is a fundamentalist atheism that is no less close-minded and dangerous than explicitly religious fundamentalism. What are your thoughts on this?

I think Chris Hedges is correct. A lot of the Neo Atheist movement is just as dogmatic as any fundamentalist religion. It’s a shame that it’s that way because I think a lot of what they’re saying in the atheist movement is true. We do need to get rid of this dogmatic idea of a man-like God in the sky who loves one set of people better than others, who provides us with an excuse to act in the worst possible way toward each other. That’s obviously nonsense. But it’s no good to replace one dogma with another. If you do that you end up no better off than you were before. You become just as elitist as the religious fundamentalists.

I don’t think all of the current crop of atheists are like this. I’ve heard that Sam Harris says he believes in God. But I’ve also noticed that he’s stopped saying this. At the time I was writing my book there was a lot of advance publicity for a book that Sam Harris was going to come out with about his ideas about God. I expected his book to appear about the same time as mine did. But it never came out and all the publicity about it appears to have shut down. I wonder if he felt too much pressure from his more dogmatic atheist fans to continue talking about God. I don’t really know. But I suspect the fundamentalist elements within that movement might be just as powerful as the fundamentalists in any religion. They don’t like heresy and they’ll force heretics to recant their position or face punishment just like any other inquisition.

What’s on your mind these days? What might the next book explore?

I don’t know for sure. But as I’ve been traveling and talking about the new book I’ve found myself engaged in a lot of really interesting discussions. This idea of God really brings up some strong feelings in a lot of people. As I’ve spoken to them I’ve found my own ideas about God are shifting and changing. You never know what people really think about controversial topics until someone is willing to bring them up for discussion. Then you get to see what sorts of ideas are actually out there, unexpressed because people have been afraid to talk about them for so long. It’s pretty amazing. Maybe I’ll write a book about that!

The Heart of Mindfulness: Funie Hsu

A Response to the New York Times

Mindfulness is attracting a large U.S. following. A recent New York Times article, “Mindfulness: Getting its Share of Attention,” details how techies, business owners, educators, and even the U.S. Marine Corps. have turned to mindfulness as a way to quiet the mind. However, the particular brand of mindfulness that is gaining widespread acceptance serves to bolster long-standing systems of power: making them more efficient, potent, and acceptable under the pretext of inner peace. Ron Purser and David Loy have examined the pitfalls of “McMindfulness” — a practice that falls under what the Buddhist Pali texts identify as “wrong mindfulness,” or micca sati. This approach, while superficially appealing, negates the heart of mindfulness: the call to social engagement.

The Times article credits Thich Nhat Hanh as “the Vietnamese Buddhist leader who introduced mindfulness to Westerners.” Yet, the article leaves out how the Zen teacher has been pivotal in the Engaged (more recently, “Applied”) Buddhism movement. In fact, mindfulness, according to Thich Nhat Hanh, is engagement with the world: When bombs begin to fall on people, you cannot stay in the meditation hall all of the time… You have to learn how to help a wounded child while still practicing mindful breathing. [1] In 1965, while exiled for speaking out against the ravages of the Vietnam War, he wrote to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., encouraging him to publicly denounce the war. “You yourself can not remain silent,” he said. [2] Mindfulness, then, is an instruction for action.

TEACHING AWARENESS: IS MINDFULNESS IN EDUCATION INCOMPLETE?

As a former public school teacher and beneficiary of dharma practice, one might expect that I’d be excited to see these mindfulness trends take off in the education world. Mindfulness as a practice of inward instruction lends itself easily to the classroom. The Times reported a lineup of speakers for the 2012 Wisdom 2.0 conference (on technology and mindfulness) that included Congressman Tim Ryan and his discussion of “using mindfulness to transform education.” Indeed, an increasing number of organizations have been established to promote the use of mindfulness in education, touting its positive effects on developing “attention and concentration,” “body awareness and coordination,” and “calming and self-control,” amongst many other skills.

Mindful awareness is winning attention and praise for its social benefits, too. A recent study found that when implementing their mindfulness curriculum for six weeks in schools in Oakland, CA, students in the treatment group demonstrated improvements in the four measured areas: Paying attention, Calming/self-control, Self-care/Participation, and Showing care for others. The schools participating in the program were noted for being located in high crime, low-income neighborhoods of Oakland, adding to the merits of the results of the mindfulness curriculum.

While enabling students to develop these individual skills is an important element of both mindfulness and schooling, we must ask with pressing compassion, “What of the central tenet of mindfulness—social justice—in this curriculum?”

How does this form of mindfulness in schools address the historical reality of segregation and recent, related trends of gentrification in Oakland?

How does it speak to the daily, lived sufferings of low-income South East Asian refugee families living in these neighborhoods, as a direct result of the displacement of war?

How does it heighten awareness of the racist War on Drugs, and other systemic practices that funnel black male youth from schools into prisons?

Such questions, such modes of awareness, do not seem to make it into the majority of “mindfulness in education” programs.

Mindfulness does not need to be taught in its religious context to be “right mindfulness,” or samma sati, but it must retain its essential heart: the teaching of non-dualistic interbeing and social action. As educators seeking to incorporate mindfulness into formal education, we must be acutely aware of how we apply our mindfulness so that it does not serve to delude us from the persistence of suffering around us. Integrating mindfulness in schools is a commitment to engaging with the systems of power and domination that contribute to suffering in our communities. Let’s think about how we can do this in schools, not just to make calm test takers, but to enliven our students’ hearts so that they are stirred to creating the world that they deserve.

What might a right mindfulness pedagogy look like in the classroom?

Mindfulness comes ripe with the opportunity to deeply investigate cause and effect. One lesson we might offer our students, for example, could be to encourage them to think and feel critically, with awakened hearts, about what it means that the U.S. Marine Corps. is using “mindfulness” techniques to optimize Marines’ performance under high stress situations. If part of the duty of a Marine includes killing, what effect will this cause? How might this affect the lives of others? And finally, What actions can we take in our daily lives to promote a just society? Then, we can plan with our students to take our list of ideas and do them. We engage with the world to relieve suffering.

As educators, we hold a unique potential for challenging the efficiency trend of McMindfulness. We can work with students to develop a critical, right mindfulness so that they are prepared to identify and respond to the pressing needs of their communities. In doing so, they might see for themselves how mindfulness has the potential to change many lives, instead of just individual lives. As educators and students living amidst the fad to quiet our minds so that we can function better under the present structures of suffering, we can insist on right mindfulness—not as a process of shaming our participation in systems of oppression, but as an awakening to the realities of our actions and the resultant global/local suffering. Because you, practitioner of mindfulness, “You yourself can not remain silent.”

Lou Reed's Meditation Death: Nancy Thompson

Laurie Anderson -- performance artist, meditator, and wife of Lou Reed -- wrote an extraordinarily beautiful description in this week's Rolling Stone of her husband's death. The couple were students of Yonge Mingur Rinpoche and had studied Buddhist teachings on how to prepare for death -- and how to live when one spouse has a terminal illness.

After Reed became sick with liver cancer and then other diseases, Anderson writes, "We tried to understand and apply things our teacher Mingyur Rinpoche said – especially hard ones like, "You need to try to master the ability to feel sad without actually being sad." As his death approached, he came home from the hospital:

As meditators, we had prepared for this – how to move the energy up from the belly and into the heart and out through the head. I have never seen an expression as full of wonder as Lou's as he died. His hands were doing the water-flowing 21-form of tai chi. His eyes were wide open. I was holding in my arms the person I loved the most in the world, and talking to him as he died. His heart stopped. He wasn't afraid. I had gotten to walk with him to the end of the world. Life – so beautiful, painful and dazzling – does not get better than that. And death? I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.

At the moment, I have only the greatest happiness and I am so proud of the way he lived and died, of his incredible power and grace.

I'm sure he will come to me in my dreams and will seem to be alive again. And I am suddenly standing here by myself stunned and grateful. How strange, exciting and miraculous that we can change each other so much, love each other so much through our words and music and our real lives.

These talks, given by extraordinary Buddhist teachers such as Roshi Joan Halifax, Sharon Salzberg, Bernie Glassman, and many more, are offered to support your practice even if you live far away from Upaya.

Apps Available Now: Did you know you can have Upaya's dharma talks delivered directly to your mobile phone or MP3 player? iPhone and iPod users, just use iTunes to subscribe to our free podcast here.

Upaya's Nepal Nomads Clinic: Compassion in the Mountains

Please consider giving to The Tsering Paljor Memorial Fund

This Fund is a memorial for Tsering, a beloved medical translator for the Nomad's Clinic. Tsering was a force of joy and a great hero to all of our community. He gave his life to save another on our journey in the Manaslu region. Donations to the Fund will be used to express deep gratitude to Tsering's family for their sacrifice.

If you wish to donate, please do so in the way that feels best. You can do this easily here. Please note that our online system is not set up to accept international donations at this time. If you live outside the U.S. or Canada, you may make a gift by using PayPal or by contacting our office at registrar@upaya.org.

The Nomads Clinic led by Roshi Joan Halifax, Tenzin Norbu, and Carroll Dunham group carried hundreds of Little Sun solar lamps to the Nubri and Tsum areas, to provide light for women and girls in the deep winter months. The Little Sun Project is "an innovative way to get clean, affordable light to the 1.6 billion people worldwide without access to the electrical grid." Learn more about the global project Little Sun.

Every year (since the early eighties), Roshi Joan goes with clinicians and friends to the Himalayas with the Nomads Clinic. We invite you to join us in supporting this wonderful work. And great thanks to Chas Curtis, Cira Crowell, and Canton Becker for putting together this wonderful website!:http://nomadsclinic.org/

Santa Fe Sangha Events

THURSDAYS (most), 9:20 am: Weekly Seminar, Upaya House living room — open to the public. Topic is usually related to the dharma talk of the evening before. To confirm that the seminar is happening that morning, please email temple@upaya.org.

Saturday, November 16, 5:30 pm: Fusatsu Full Moon Ceremony A traditional Buddhist ceremony of atonement, purification, and renewing of the precepts. Upaya holds Fusatsu every month, usually on the day of the full moon. Please join us in the temple for this beautiful ceremony.

SUNDAY, November 24, 3 pm, Meditation Instruction Upaya's Temple Coordinator Shinzan Palma offers instruction on meditation and temple etiquette for those who are new to meditation and practice at Upaya. There is no fee, but registration is recommended. Please contact Shinzan at temple@upaya.org or 505-986-8518 x21.

SUNDAY, November 24, Upaya House, 6:30 pm, Dharma Discussion Group Please join Upaya’s Local Sangha as we continue our study of the paramitas, or “practices of perfection.” The paramita we are studying in November is Concentration, or Contemplation. The group meets informally from 6:30-7 pm at Upaya House with tea and cookies, with the formal program running from 7- 8:30 pm. We encourage starting by joining the residents for the 5:30 zazen practice. All are welcome as we discuss, explore and further our practice.

Calgary, AB, Canada: Calgary Contemplative End of Life Care Practice Group. For professionals and volunteers working with people who are dying. Second Monday each month at Hospice Calgary's Sage Center, 6:30 – 8:30 pm. Sit starts at 7 pm. For further information, contact laurie.lemieux@hospicecalgary.com

NEW: Westbury, Wiltshire, U.K. This new group will hold its first meeting on Sunday, October 27th from 3-5 pm at The East Wing, 35 Church Street, Westbury, Wiltshire. For more info, e-mail Jan Mojsa, janmojsa@googlemail.com.